On Bindrune Recordings - available this month in Digipak CD format

New tracks here: http://soundcloud.com/user6158760

can you tell me what it sounds like because i dont feel like copying and pasting?

It sounds fucking awesome is what it sounds like! Grandiose, heraldic, and hypnotic, but concise. Congratulations rw, well done. I want to hear more!

Is there a way to download these or are they just streaming?

Oh wow. This is fucking great. I want to know more about this band. The vocals fucking rule.

sounds rad! wanna hear it on better speakers than my shitty computer jawns.

i copy/pasted. it's really good.

Real real good.

Oh jeez, thanks all. I kinda expected nobody to care about this.

Anyway, glad you like it. Yeah, I'm really proud of the vocals on this probably more than anything. Not very many people doing vocals like that anymore. It was really scary to hear him tracking! And although they're not printed, he's a fucking excellent lyricist.

This band is just the two of us with some mystery guests. I played bass, drums and all acoustic guitars (and the second solo on Arrows). BDN wrote all of the electric guitar parts lyrics and vocals. Recorded it ourselves with assistance from The Red Monk at Sunless Houses in Minnetonka.

No downloads for now, just streaming. The CD is going to look amazing (gatefold digipak) and will be well worth the purchase. We'll put them at Ex-Noise and Bindrune does CDs for $11 ppd, I believe. They should be done in about 2 weeks. I'll bump.

We have a 3 song cassette demo also, but it kind of disappeared for the time being. I'm probably going to remix it and get it reposted at some point. We split electric guitar duties equally on that and that was self-recorded also. Here's a link to one of the songs on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOl1j1fS3G0

Our MA page for more info:
http://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Obsequiae/3540290073

Man. I've been listening to this over and over again today. I knew rock witch is a talented dude who takes what he does very seriously, but I am really stunned by how magnificent this is.

I will most assuredly be purchasing the CD.

Cosigned. Haven't been this piqued by something local in an age.

It's great from beginning to end, but 1:39 to 2:03 in Altars of Moss and the final eighteen seconds of Arrows contain almost too much beauty to handle.

The melodic majesty is owed largely to BDN.

m/ m/

hahahaha rw

Yah this is great. The CD is an autobuy for sure.

Pre-orders available with poster. Should be shipping anytime now.

congrats on getting the project out! know it's been a long road.

Copies now at Extreme Noise for $12.

Direct order from Bindrune gets you a free poster $11 ppd.

Metal Reviews (Jake)
"Surprise of the Month"
Suspended in the Brume of Eos is the superb debut album from Minneapolis band Obsequiae, who just might be the first U.S. act to stand a chance of making a difference in black metal. (Cry me a river, Liturgy). They're arguably not quite a black metal band—they're closer to folk metal on paper. Nevertheless, the meat and bones of their album is trebly tremolo riffs burning through classical European scales over relentless snares and beneath an incomprehensibly reverberating emotive screech; isolate the stuff from context and it could probably hang with the Trve Kvlt. There are no keyboard parts here, though, no organs or strings; and no grandstanding pomposity or oh-so-scary-tough-guy dissonance. In place of all the usual noise, you'll find acoustic folk interludes rooted in medieval music rather than the more common Pagan or Celtic, trading off with gently blistering guitar-bass-drums metal that stretches those scalar ideas over the rhythmic energy of the great British metal bands and filters it all through a cold, spare atmosphere. The resulting sound is one made of strikingly coherent melodies, and defiantly so. I'm not one to decry wholesale the invasion of the dreaded hipster into the metal culture, but it is true that a small army of “forward-thinking” metal musicians, most of them Americans in hoodies, have been breaking the same rules in the same ways for so long that by now we all know exactly what “breaking the rules” means and sounds like. Obsequiae have broken those rules, eschewing sleepy ambience and jagged rhythms to create a sound that's highly listenable, intricate rather than excessive, and genuinely cutting-edge.

The album's rhythm is built on a more-or-less alternation between three- to six-minute tunes in the idiom I've described and those medieval folk interludes. That last three-word phrase will scare some people off with good reason, but this is not nerd metal; the frank and quiet starkness of the interludes (which restrict themselves mostly to the acoustic guitar, never approaching schmaltz or bombast) and the pace and dedication of the metal songs would completely alienate that bookish girl you know who likes Nightwish. (I do not at all wish to imply that there is anything wrong with bookish girls. Only with Nightwish.) As I've said, the interludes and the songs are built on the same ideas melodically, but the reason I hesitate to apply the descriptor “folk metal” is that even the most refined and respectable bands in that field, like Ensiferum and Wintersun, accomplish something like a fusion or meeting of two genres, which is not really what Obsequiae have done. Imagine instead that metal had simply taken the progressions of medieval folk as its initial melodic basis, rather than rock and roll and the blues. Suspended in the Brume of Eos is a taste of what the metal bands of that alternate universe are recording en masse in 2011. The songs, then, won't necessarily call the medieval aesthetic to mind (though the cover art does that draw that connection for you). Multi-instrumentalist Neidhart von Reudtal and guitarist/vocalist Blondel de Nesle (I presume these are stage names) have appropriated just enough of that Norwegian wind-in-the-speakers guitar tone that black metal bands use so effectively to evoke natural beauty, and coupled it with a tasteful amount of spacey noodling—especially in opening number Altars of Moss, which may briefly ring bells for Mastodon fans. If the result evokes an image for you, it's less likely to be knights and Christian kings than a clear, dark winter sky. The mix is not as unrefined as the Norwegians used to like theirs, though; while the treble does occasionally swallow a guitar lead, most tragically at the beginning of the otherwise fantastic Arrows, there's a highly unusal amount of bass here.

It's a good thing, too, because the contributions of Reudtal, the one-man rhythm section, give the album much of its character. He's as fast and dynamic a drummer as this stuff calls for, but he really shines on the four-string. Despite the warm and round tone he plays with, there's more than a little Iron Maiden in his bouncy, high-speed basslines, and he makes creative choices when it comes to accenting, complementing, or countering the guitar parts. Nesle is listed as the sole composer, but these feel like basslines written by a bass player; my instinct is that Reudtal was given fairly free reign to play what he wanted, and it's to Nesle's credit as a songwriter that he saw the wisdom it that.

This is beautiful stuff. It's dynamic, moving, brutal, loud and sincere. It's tough to say whether Obsequiae can live up to a debut this good, but I'm excited to find out. Suspended in the Brume of Eos of could be the start of a phenomenal discography; get in on the ground floor and buy the album. 93/100

Oh wow, I missed this before, but it's damn awesome. Outstanding work.

That's a great review! Congratulations, RW!

Nesle is listed as the sole composer, but these feel like basslines written by a bass player; my instinct is that Reudtal was given fairly free reign to play what he wanted

So is this part accurate?

Yeah. I dont have any idea where it was said BDN was sole composer. He wrote the electric guitar parts except for 3 solos, 2 played by a guest and 1 by me. The 4 acoustic pieces are just me. Those are actually 13th century medieval pieces that I recorded for my brothers wedding. Renamed, of course. : )

If you have any plans to visit my workplace, I will happily purchase one. Otherwise, I will figure out some way to get one from you.

nice! i like that the review praised you and chided Liturgy at the same time.

Ha, I've actually never heard Liturgy. But I despise Nightwish, so that was nice.

sweet. i might have to make an extreme noise run this weekend. congrats on the release rw.

dude, this is great - well done!

super good RW!

Aw shuck, thx dudes. Already working on the next one : )

Listening to this again tonight, specifically "Atonement". Lots of air instruments on my part. I was like a medieval German church organist, as well as the drummer for Weather Report. Good grief, this record is fucking great.

Heh - I'm really sorry I spaced a proper copy for you last week! I may be in St. Paul again later this week, so I'll def leave one at your store if so.

Also gotta get some more copies of the demo done - we did a ltd run of cassettes but they sound like SHIT because, well, they're cassettes. I think I may just put it up on Bandcamp.

i like this.

This project is easily one of the most impressive things bubbling under the surface of these cities for the last few years. Glad to see you getting some accolades. Well deserved.

Whoa! A posi review of us from the design director of LEGO! No shit!

This is fucking awesome.

Invisible Oranges feature.

http://www.invisibleoranges.com/2011/09/interview-obsequiae/

hey what happened to the soundcloud page

No more freebies, I guess. Chaucer meets evil meets electricity. Good stuff.

this shit rules. buy a copy.

RW, thanks for hooking me up with this. Finally got around to listening to it and I'll just echo the accolades above.

Mrs. Low liked the music but wondered why your singer is so grouchy and if he maybe needs a hug.

Also, "most of them Americans in hoodies." Heh.

Thanks a ton, RW! This is fuckin' killer.

dude, 'the wounded fox'...such a siq riff. wtf.

Thanks folks.

It's on Bandcamp now too, FYI. Apparently coming on vinyl, but I'm out of the picture at this point so I don't know.

Obsequiae is apparently continuing with a new drummer/bassist, but it's going to be very different to be sure.

I've been listening to all sorts of underground metal for almost 20 years now. While there are many great bands putting out high quality releases these days, it's somewhat rare when a band comes along and really excites me like when I was first getting into underground music.

Obsequiae is the first band in ages that has brought me back to those feelings I had back in the 90s when the bands I was listening to were really fresh and exciting. Everything about them is unique and just fantastically kick-ass: from the vocals, to the guitar-work, the drumming, the awesome classical guitar interludes, the production, even the cover/layout of the CD...it's just perfect. The riffs are incredibly memorable and catchy too, but complex so nothing gets boring. It's exactly the type of music I've wanted to hear a band play since the 90s, but just didn't realize it.

I really just want to thank both guys in the band. They've created something that's going to bring me endless hours of enjoyment, and for that I'm eternally grateful.

Hey Rock Witch, is there anyway I could hear the 3-song demo you guys put out? I can't seem to find it anywhere, even the MP3s. I'm borderline obsessed with your music (haha) and I'm dying to hear the full demo. I'm sure the cassettes are sold out, but I really hope you'll reissue it on CD and/or vinyl in the near future. I'm very much a physical-copy kind of guy. :-)

Welcome, Cire79. Your enthusiasm is awesome and it couldn't be directed toward a nicer dude.

Agreed

Cire79, I sent you a private message re: the demo. Since you're new to the board, you may not have seen it. It's in the "messages" menu at the top of the page.

Thanks for the kind words.

Listening to this RIGHT NOW.
As expected, it is excellent. Love it.

Thanks guys! :-)

over memorial day weekend, i made a new Obsequiae convert out of my cousin.
he's a pretty big metal fan, and freaked over the disc.

I listened to this repeatedly on my new work van's very good stereo, very loud.
Really amazing. A lot of dimension to this record, and it really sets itself apart from the pack in many ways.

totally agree. nice and varied and totally rocking.

Rock Witch gave me a copy of this at Heliotrope, it's pretty amazing. It scared the shit out of my dog though.

That's funny. It scared the shit out of the dog in the house during the vocal takes too. Not surprising : )